The /newstuff Chronicles #254

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Hey hey, it's the newstuffees! I'm sorry that this is a week late *cough* MMORPG ADDICTION *cough*, but a few communication problems involving #253 caused me to be late! Not only that, but I stole four unreviewed wads from #253 and placing them in this news post, since well... there's only four zips to review for #254. I'll be nice and indicate the #253 wads and #254 wads seperately, so you know what's hot and what's not... chronologically!

From the week of /newstuff #253:

Automation - RavageZDoom - N/A - 1.2mb - (img)(img)
A rather standard weapons mod, with minor modifications to the weapons and with new graphics replacing each weapon. The only problem I have with this is that the weapon sprites are way too dark. The chaingun is a perfect example of what I mean.

Italian DooM - Episodio 1 - "The Italian Team"ZDoom - SP - 4.2mb - (img)(img)(img)(img)
Compromising of Ismaele, Toranaga and Buzzbomber, this wonderful eight-map set displays the excellent teamwork with these three fine authors. Although there's a couple of maps that aren't up to the par with the rest, this map set is simply amazing to play. It is a little bit hard at the start, and those moving ceilings at the start at MAP01 are awfully loud, but that's the only downside to this WAD. The secret map is a very odd secret map however...

Seriously, this wad just screams out "play me now you bastard! I'll eat your soul and suck you dry until you finish all 20 levels!" and that's what more or less happened to me. Great detail, great gameplay, great new monsters, great everything. Unfortunately Agent Spork never finished this megawad, but I'm curious to know what could have been the final product. Regardless, this gets WAD OF THE WEEK FOR #253

The Weapons Resource Wad - Several (compiled by Hobbs and DomRem)ZDoom - N/A - 2.8mb - (img)(img)(img)(img)(img)
I am not happy with this WAD at all. I'll let the most annoying thing off my chest first: I was forced to reboot this computer when I was playing it. That's right, this is the only time that I've ever encountered such a crash with ZDoom that I could not remove the process in Task Manager. I lost part of this article because of it, and that especially pisses me off. That's not a good start to something I was expecting high hopes for.

Because of that problem, I'm going to review this WAD more negatively than I normally would to other high-expectation WADs. Just to make things more interesting, I'll review this WAD according to each weapon slot:

Slot 1 - Other than the kickass Necronomicon and Demon Spawner, this slot sucks. Boring melee weapons.Slot 2 - Boring pistols. The Serious Bomb is funny in a malevolent way. The COP Derringer is the most overrated piece of crap ever.Slot 3 - Boring shotguns, tons of sprite rips. The flak cannon is incredibly underpowered compared to it's UT counterpart, and it has no secondary fire! What kind of world are we living in where we bastardise weapons from other games?Slot 4 - Boring auto-shotguns and chainguns, weak flamethrower. More sprite rips!Slot 5 - Gets more interesting here. There's a gun that ripped off the HacX nuke sprite that does an interesting effect when you hold onto it. Other than that and some crazy coloured projectile gun, nothing really interesting.Slot 6 - This contains the Poison Gun that shoots green blobs of clouds. This weapon is the one that caused the crash. INSTANT NEGATIVE 999 POINTS! Not only that, but there's also the Demon Hand, which uses sprites stolen from my (old and slightly inaccurate) Alpha Resource WAD without giving appropiate credit (which is meant to be to Cacodemon_Leader). Matter of fact, it's credited to NMN for creating the sprite and Wario for doing the code! A little bit of further investigating proved that Wario had never told DomRem where he got the sprite from, so all I have to say is this: Nice try, but give credit where credit is due. There's also some interesting weapons here and there.Slot 7 - This slot is the only slot I loved to bits. However, the BFG2704 is a highly inaccurate remake. It doesn't even have vertical thrusting which is featured in the Doom Press Release beta!Slot 0 - Land mines, molotov cocktails and pipebombs, oh my! I didn't even realise this slot existed until after I finished this review, and boy these weapons seriously kick ass, especially the land mines! Hooray for senseless violence!
Overall, this weapon mod has too much crap occupying the first few slots. Take out all of the crappy hitscan, melee weapons and sprite rips, and you've got one high quality set.

From the week of /newstuff #254:

Night Sky v2.0 - Rich "Weeds" NagelN/A - N/A - 863kb - (img)(img)
Normally I don't review anything that's older than 12 months old, but this is an exception today, considering I'm not sure of what was updated in this zip since 1998, other than the inclusion of a WAD with Strife sky replacements...

Upon further observation, these set of WADs only contain one sky replacing every single damn sky in every single damn IWAD. Well, so much for expecting a nice variety of skies.

Stairs to Hell - Vasek "Damned" HavranekZDoom - SP - 383kb - (img)(img)
As the title indicates, there are a lot of stairs you go down, and there's not much ammo or health laying around to help you fend off those evil hordes of monsters. Because of that and the frustrating small areas of combat I had fought in, I pretty much gave up on this after a few attempts. If you like cramped gameplay with minimal items, then this is for you. If not, don't bother with this. Considering this is the only new level WAD for this week, it gets the WAD OF THE WEEK FOR #254 by default. Fun.

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I am not happy with this WAD at all. I'll let the most annoying thing off my chest first: I was forced to reboot this computer when I was playing it. That's right, this is the only time that I've ever encountered such a crash with ZDoom that I could not remove the process in Task Manager.

That's a problem with Zdoom, not the wad. It's done that to my computer several times.

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That's what. Anyways, the credit thing was already fixed while we were discussing it on IRC, so cacodemon_killer's rightfully in the credits for the sprites in future versions. Moral: Assuming is very bad.

And it's very nice to finally see a review for the WRW. It was much better than I'd expected, especially for a negative one. :)

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I have fallen madly in love with simplicity! The basic yet addictive gameplay provides one with hours and hours of fun. The bosses tease you with their advanced scripting making you beg to learn more about them... The tricks and traps seem so predictable yet they guarantee soiled and wet pants every time. The sky textures are simply sexy and will instantly give one a hard on! The sheer map design will have you moaning with desire, wishing for the map to shed its light garmets to expose its lush and well shaped secrets!